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Acting: It Must Look Effortless
From: American Film Institute
| By:
Dustin Hoffman |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Dustin Hoffman (below) has had a long and successful career as both a leading man and a character actor. He has worked with some of the most creative and productive directors in Hollywood and has performed in some of the most critically acclaimed films in American cinema. Following are some of Hoffman's recollections, in published interviews from 1968 to 1998, about his career, his films, his acting methods and the menagerie of Hollywood personalities with whom he has worked. |
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| The 1967 film trailer for The Graduate. | |
 othing really prepped me for all this even though I grew up in a Hollywood atmosphere. For a while, my father was a prop man and set designer at a movie studio, but I was never too impressed by the kind of life that was all around anybody who grew up in Los Angeles. My folks moved there from Chicago during the thirties with a Model A Ford and 50 bucks and my brother, Ronald, who's five years older than I am. My mother named us both after movie stars--Ronald Colman and Dustin Farnum. I've never seen any of Farnum's silent movies. Actually it was a miserable name to have as a kid; you were always compared to dustbin. In the beginning I thought I was going to be a pianist. It wasn't that I asked to study, it was just that one day there was a piano in front of me and there I was, taking lessons at six. I kept that up until 16. I even had a jazz combo in high school. We used to get Dave Brubeck records and imitate them, but we weren't very good at it and finally quit. |
I never had any idea that I was going to be an actor. Everybody told me that I was going to be a comedian. My brother was always at the top of the class, but I was the one who made the other kids laugh. |
I went to Fairfax High, which was in a rough part of town. I liked it much better when we were poor than when we were rich. I like the kids better. In the classier schools you didn't count unless you had a car, or if you were a girl, 20 cashmere sweaters, and none of that meant anything in poorer sections. The kids were friendlier. |
I went to college in Santa Monica for a year, but before I quit, a dramatics course switched me into studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. I didn't want to be an actor for any positive reason. It was a sheerly negative reaction to the necessity of studying and becoming a doctor or something like that. |
Five years passed without my getting anyplace. When I first decided to be an actor, I fantasized about being a star. After a few years in New York, that was kicked out of me. I had all the jobs that actors have. I demonstrated toys at Macy's, and taught acting at a boys' club in East Harlem. Then I typed for Manpower. That was probably my main job. Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall and I were guys in New York who really were hoping to get off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway roles for the rest of our lives. |
In The Graduate I played this nail, this uptight guy. People said, "That's not an actor, that's a guy they chose because he is that character." Never mind that I was 30 playing 21 and that I worked very hard. They thought it was really me. In one sense, of course, that's a compliment. That's what you want. You don't want to be caught acting. It must look effortless. |
After The Graduate I waited eight months to find a good part and then went into Midnight Cowboy. Ratso was a wonderful character. About 70 percent of the dialogue came from improvisations between Jon Voight and myself that the writer took down on a tape recorder. I came closer in Midnight Cowboy to achieving the kind of work that is most personal to me. You color it in such a way that you not only do something that's personal to you but try to define it and make a statement in terms of what you feel. I not only felt there was a large Ratso inside me but also that we are all both--we are all the Bowery derelicts and we are all the successful movie star. Banging on the taxi in Midnight Cowboy, "I'm walking here," that was an accident. That was a hidden camera, and it was a cab that almost ran us over. [John] Schlesinger left it in, but many directors wouldn't have. |
Little Big Man took several months to make; we shot in Montana where it was 110 degrees above, in Canada at 40 degrees below. |
Sam Peckinpah directed Straw Dogs. Sam was like a fight trainer. He shaped you up. He psyched you, he drew everything out of you. |
Lenny [Bruce, the title character of Lenny] was up against a wall and I've felt up against a wall. |
On Kramer vs. Kramer the producer was Stanley Jaffe, the director-writer was Bob Benton. I had this part that was central to the story, and the three of us worked on the script for months and we brought forth our own experiences. We argued, we talked, we fought--and out of it, I think, came a somewhat personal film, by the three of us. I thought it was ideal. |
Making Tootsie was hard work but it proved to be a joy. And who would have thought I could transform myself into an attractive, even sexy, woman. Of course, the makeup, the Southern-accented voice patterns and sexy glasses all helped. |
In many ways I can't evaluate Ishtar, because it's the only movie I've ever been on that was attacked like that. Before Ishtar I never realized there was this desire to kill a film. |
I did so much research on Rain Man. It was so difficult to find the key. There's an autistic novelist--such a thing is possible--Temple Grandin. What she said, the doctors say: The autistic person can't stand to be touched. Can't stand it! But what she added was: "When I was growing up, I wanted nothing more than to hold someone and have someone hold me." |
When Mamet said he didn't write American Buffalo about "them," that he wrote it about himself, I realized that Teach wasn't some character who was different than me. Teach is me. He's a lonely guy. I'm one step away from being lonely. He's an unsuccessful guy. I'm one step away from being unsuccessful. That's all you have to know. I don't understand people that see a distance between themselves and characters like Teach or Ratso Rizzo or what we call the fringe of society or the losers of society or the gutter heap or the low life. |
I was not playing Bob Evans in Wag the Dog. I was playing my father. Barry Levinson is the one director that I've done the most movies with. I've done four movies with him--Rain Man, Sleepers, Wag the Dog, and Sphere. If he's directing, I automatically say, "Is there a part for me?" |
In a way, I've been hanging on my fingertips for the whole ride. Either you're in the "in" club or you're in the "out" club. I was always in the "out" club. It hasn't changed after 40 years. |
They never call a cameraman or sound man a perfectionist. It's inherent. You better be, or you're fired. I mean, it's like you're on the operating table and they say, "You're gonna love this surgeon--he's a nice guy and he isn't a perfectionist." Well, gee, can I have a perfectionist? |
The picture's the most important thing. Someone once said to me, "Isn't friendship more important?" and I said, "No, The friendship is gravy. We didn't go in here to improve our friendship. We didn't both sign the contract to work on our relationship. We signed the contract to make as good a movie as we could." |
I like to challenge that mystery of why one runner wins by a tenth of a second. What is that transcending, primal thing that enables you to push yourself beyond, beyond, beyond--further than what is possible? That is what I try for somehow in my work. |
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